Explicit structure

“Explicit is better than implicit.”
— The Zen of Python

Some works are highly systematic, and they make their structure explicit. They may have intricately divided subheadings like Kant’s works, or they may try to emphatically set apart the definitions and axioms like Spinoza, or they may use an apparatus like medieval disputation or symbolic logic.

Other works leave that implicit. Hobbes’s Leviathan is rightly recognized as a highly understandable and systematic and rigorous work, even if it’s mistaken about things— but it’s relatively “low-tech”, with the running text apparently divided into chapters just to break up the reading and make lookups easier. The case is similar with Murray Rothbard’s ethics and economics, regardless of their other merits.

Implicit structure seems to make for more pleasant reading, but it can also make the structure harder to pick out. Some people may not notice that, besides his famous self-ownership, Rothbard introduces an entirely new fundamental axiom when he starts to talk about punishment and proportionality, since he doesn’t set it apart very emphatically.

It seems easier to simply dismiss an implicitly structured work, since there is no simple way to pick out the parts of its analysis that you reject or would want changed. If you disagree with Hobbes, then I guess you just disagree, and that’s that. If you reject a proposition of Spinoza, on the other hand, you can easily be called upon to criticize either the demonstration or the definitions and axioms which it explicitly evokes.

Sometimes, a lack of explicit structure can allow for a real lack of structure. Hume’s Treatise seems to have a lot of “filler” chapters, which I’m not sure why he even included them. It probably made sense at the time. Maybe.

I think that, in the end, explicit structure is simply better, it’s just not used more because it’s harder to accomplish. Some great work has been done with merely implicit structure, but it could benefit from more explicit formulation— as Spinoza did to Descartes, in his geometrical exposition of the Principles.